For my brother 11th Birthday I wanted to make him a cake for a present. While I was searching for recipes the usual birthday cake seems boring and outdated and the shop bought ones tacky. So i decided to adapt a cherry cake recipe I found, as cherries are not in season I decided to use a children’s favourite.. strawberries!

Making the cake was not all plain sailing, with a dog running under your feet and the kitchen the size of a shoe box, you can imagine at some point the stress kicked in! But the overall cake was a success

What you need:

175g self-raising flour

1 tsp baking powder

140g golden caster sugar

140g very soft, salted butter

3 eggs

3 tbsp milk

1 Mashed Banana

Topping

200g white chocolate

400g Strawberries

150ml crème fraîche

Ok first preheat the oven to 18oC/gas 4 and then line two 20cm sandwich tins and grease. and while the oven is heating up grate the milk chocolate.

Now add the sugar and butter to a mixing bowl and ‘cream’ the mixture until white and fluffy (here you need to make sure the butter is really soft, otherwise it will go all lumpy and horrible). Once ‘creamed’ add the flour, eggs and baking powder and hand mix until light and dough, making sure everything is mixed in nicely. Then throw in the grated chocolate the mashed banana and fold into the mixture. you will smell and lovely banana-ry scent which will make you want to lick the spoon.

Take the mixture and evenly spread into the sandwich tins and bake on the middle self of the oven for 20-30 minutes, until golden and springy. Once done take out and cool. I think it’s best to make the sponge the day before and store in an air tight container.

Now for the topping, break up the white chocolate and melt in a bain-marie slowly, then set aside for 5 mins. After it has slightly

cooled and gone a bit thicker take half of the strawberries and dip them into the chocolate, placing them delicately on parchment paper to set. While they are setting take the remainder of the strawberries and cut up into small pieces, and we will use them later.

Take the melted chocolate and add the creme fraiche stand for 5 mins, and separate into two bowls. With one bowl and the cut up strawberries and mix, this will be the sandwich filling so liberally spread on the top of one sponge cake. Place the other on top, don’t worry about neatness, i think when you can see the yummy goo running down it looks nice! Then simply take the rest of the milk chocolate mix spead on the top and arrange you dipped strawberries! Enjoy!

This looks amazing – I’ll have to learn a thing or two about baking from you! Strawberry cake is my absolute favorite – looking forward to trying this. I’ve added you to my blogroll — http://thequickanddirtycook.wordpress.com/